Another Reason to Dive Solo

[Big John]

The thing that scares me about this is this lawyer quote:

Feldman failed in his role of dive buddy, a "special relationship" that required him to come to the aid of his diving partner, the suit says.

I know it is lawyer speak, but if that argument wins in court once the sport could be in for a storm of trouble.

[in_cavediver]

Originally Posted by Big John

The thing that scares me about this is this lawyer quote:

I know it is lawyer speak, but if that argument wins in court once the sport could be in for a storm of trouble.

Yeah - make that the case and I'd only dive with my wife and people who paid to dive with me. I mean, if I have a 'special relationship', I might as well prosper from it right!

[Chilkie]

All the more reason to carry a pony bottle. The less reliant you are on another, the better off you are.

[in_cavediver]

Originally Posted by Chilkie

All the more reason to carry a pony bottle. The less reliant you are on another, the better off you are.

There is more to it than just equipment. A better way to phrase this is the more self sufficient you and your buddy are, they better off each of you are.

Merely throwing equipment in the mix doesn't equate to being less reliant on your buddy.

[BubblesMcCoy]

Originally Posted by Big John

The thing that scares me about this is this lawyer quote:

I know it is lawyer speak, but if that argument wins in court once the sport could be in for a storm of trouble.

It is lawyers speak, but it truly is an argument to be afraid of. Unfortunately, there is some ground for the argument. I know these cases have come up, I don't know how successful they have been, I'm sure it really depends on the facts more than anything else.

But, an earlier poster raised the idea, albeit in jest, of having a liability waiver for dive budies. Why not? There's nothing magical about a waiver. I'm not sure I'd pull one on an instabuddy, but I'm fairly certain that my regular dive buddies wouldn't want their families suing me, or my family. So why not use a short simply worded waiver to keep in the log book.

Each state has its own particular requirements, and no state that I know of allows liability for intentional conduct to be waived, but if the dive community banded together and produced a "standard form" buddy agreement and waiver, even if it didn't meet every technical requirement, it would be strong (possibly admissible) evidence that the signing diver was affirming that he/she was taking responsibility for their own safety/training despite whatever the buddy does/does not do?

Surely PADI or one of the other training agencies has thought of this. Has anyone ever heard of such an attempt?

[Coastie6]

An instabuddy is probably the first person I'd hand one to. This is a slippery slope. Sure hate where things have gone, but the fact is it's where we are. This particular case did seem to have some additional circumstantial information that could be involved, but who knows.

[BubblesMcCoy]

Originally Posted by Coastie6

An instabuddy is probably the first person I'd hand one to. This is a slippery slope. Sure hate where things have gone, but the fact is it's where we are. This particular case did seem to have some additional circumstantial information that could be involved, but who knows.

I did some research and was very surprised to find that beside this case, I could only find one other reported case where the family of a deceased diver sued the buddy.

Tons of lawsuits against dive ops, resorts, and instructors, but almost nothing against buddies. Either the suits are settled out of court, not reported (generally only reported when appealed), or plaintiffs lawyers don't go after buddies because there isn't enough insurance money to make it worthwhile.

I still think a buddy waiver, like an organ donor card, is not a bad thing to let surviving family members know how much the dearly departed diver would not have wanted to sue a buddy after an accident. But, with so few reported cases, I'm starting to see the above case as an outlier.

[navyhmc]

Interesting...thanks for doing the reseach BubblesMcCoy.